
i Book 



lass.X- 



Author 



Title 



Imprint. 



16—47378-1 OPO 



'4 



SCIEIsrCE 



A POEM 



PEDICATED TO THE 



AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 



ALBANY, AUaUST 38, 1856, 



ALFRED B. STREET. 



ALBANY: * 

VAN BENTHUYSEN, PRIXTER, 407 BROADWAV, 
185G. 



6 












POEM. 



Science, Explorer, Teacher, Power sublime, 
Thy path the Universe — thine empire, Time ! 
At thy grand look the startled darkness flies. 
And living splendors kindle earth and skies. 

It is not thine to rear the fairy fane 

Wrought of bright fancies in the glowing brain ; 

Not thine to summon from the stubborn stone 

Forms that all grace and loveliness enthrone; 

Not thine to waken on the canvas, hues. 

Sister to those imperial Autumn strews; 

Thine not the charm, with music's magic shell. 

Around the soul to weave delicious spell. 

No! it is thine the loftiest heavens to sweep, 

Pierce the red terrors of the central deep. 

Drag from its depths the shrinking, struggling star, 

And chain it captive to thy conquering car; 

Then trace, with lowliest eye and subtlest art. 

Life's tiny process in the floweret's heart. 

Thine, to unloose the sky's entangled maze, 
And bid it range in order to thy gaze — 
Where the sun mantles his majestic frame 
In his terrific atmosphere of flame; 
Where loveliest Luna sheds on all below 
The streaming silence of her silver snow; 

* This Poem, for want of time, was not delivered. 

17 



Where mourn the Pleiades their sister light 

For long, long ages stricken from their sight; 

Star of the North, where thou, with faithful sway, 

Lead'st the lone sailor on his surging way! 

Where seas of nebulae are faintly traced — 

Within whose haze are Virgo's wings embraced — 

And where again they stretch their surges dim 

Till in the depths the glittering Fishes swim; ' 

Where flames Aldebaran with crimson hue; 

And Lyra sparkles in her lovely blue ; 

Where in the Cygnet stood the star whose ray 

Flashed into scarlet — paled — then died away ; 

Where sovereign Sirius shows her splendid gleam ; 

Double Al Geiba's gold and emerald beam; 

Where Argo skims the ethereal ocean's brow 

With Markeb's torchlight pouring from its prow; 

Where, bowing grandly to the passing hours, 

The Southern Cross its gorgeous radiance showers. 

Whose " holy lights," in Dante's mystic line, 

With Justice, Prudence, Strength and Temperance shine; 

With the alternate orbs — the Polar Three — 

Blazing abroad Faith, Hope and Charity— 

The First loud launching its proud chaunt afar, 

" Here we are Nymphs, but each in heaven a star!" 

Types of the seven great virtues — guides on earth — 

But angels still in realms that saw their birth; 

Where the vast serpent's convolutions roll; 

Where the black stars crawl, weird-like, round the pole; 

Where, through the orbless deserts there outspread, 

Sufi's White Ox and lowlier brother tread; 

Where, smoothed by distance to one boundless ray 

Of shining sun-dust, rolls the Milky Way; — 

The whole vast Universe, in sovereign thrall. 

Marching around one central World of all ! 

Oh Tropic heavens, last born and issuing forth 
In golden mail for conquest of the North ! 
The first time dawning on the Brahmin's eye 
In thy strange splendors, from his colder sky! - 
Oh Tropic heavens! what pomp superb is thine! 
Man, peal thy loftiest hymn at God's sublimest shrine! 



And thou whole Universe, thy Balance hung *'' 

On the Equator ! can the feeble tongue 
Proclaim thy glories ? No ! heart, reason prone, 
Awed into nought we sink at His Almighty Throne ! 

How grand to dwell in Saturn, and behold 
Those rings of glittering hues around him rolled : 
Drink, in far Uranus, with dazzled eye 
The pomp of moons that crowns his stately sky : 
Dash with the Comet darting on his flight. 
Through all the flood — the majesty of light: 
Past, where winged Perseus wields aloft his brand : 
The star where points Andromeda her hand : 
Past sceptred Cepheus: o'er the Cygnet's wings: 
Where shows the Harp its many colored strings : 
Whirl by Bootes hounding on the Bear : 
Round the grim Lions! round the Hydra's lair : 
O'er Argo's deck — thence, mark, across the field. 
The rich stars flashing in the Centaur's shield : 
Thence, where the Carrier holds his spangled urn : 
Where in Orion's belt the diamonds burn: 
Then, the all conquering sun approaching nigh, 
Feel his keen fire upon the withering eye : 
Then, shooting madly from that scorching blaze, 
Behold him shrink at last a point upon the gaze. 

Next from some shuddering height, to downward plunge, 
Down through the worlds in one terrific lunge, 
Down, down, through breathless depths, to other realms 
Whose very thought the reason overwhelms — 
Then up the same stupendous height to scale 
Where Fancy's lightning wing in staggering terrors fail. 

Thou claim'st the soft Zodiacal, whose gold 
Owns the free Ring in neighboring ether rolled ; 
The wondrous region of the meteor-spray, 
And where the rich Auroral splendors play; 
The slumbering clouds that silver summer's air, 
Or, with dread threatening, grimly blacken there; 
The dry Harmattan, in its misty flight. 
Blinding the sun and changing all to white ; 



The Stream that, rolling from its mystic source, 
Breathes its own climate in its wandering course; 
The strange Magnetic currents of the globe; 
Its life-sustaining atmospheric robe; 
The drear Eclipse — the boiling Thermal flood ; 
Java's death-valley; Morat's lake of blood; 
The Caspian's burning shore; the ceaseless fire 
The Parsee worshipped on his mountain pyre; 
The moon's gray earth-light; Twilight's lingering gleam; 
The weed-twined fields that o'er the ocean stream; 
The feathery flake; the rainbow's lovely hues; 
The gloomy frost-smoke; the condensing dews; 
The deadly Earthquake writhing on its path ; 
The fierce Volcano bursting in its wrath; 
The welcome west-wind's sweet, caressing breath; 
The mad Tornado whirling forth in death; 
The Maelstrom lurking with its grasping grave ; 
The trampling Spout — that link of cloud and wave ; 
The Ocean's western march — its ebb and flow; 
The Earth's mysterious self-existent glow; 
The Phantom Vessel glimmering in the sky ; 
The Brocken's Spectre, darkly reared on high; 
The crimson snow that fringes Arctic ice; 
The weird Parhelion's beautiful device; 
The wizard ball that dances on the mast; 
The fiery surges by the prow upcast ; 
Locked icebergs splintering through the awful night; 
And quenchless midnight suns with their wild scarlet light. 

Summits whose flint frowns back the smiling Spring, 
Where dies the moss, and cowers the Condor's wing; 
Slopes, where the avalanche its ambush takes, 
Bursts at a breath, and down in thunder breaks; 
Gulfs, where from year to year the glacier creeps; 
Cloud-piercing crags the chamois only leaps; 
Mountains whose thawless snows sublimely rise 
In peaks, like Titans, challenging the skies. 
Where the blood pauses in the blasting air, 
Dauntless treads Science, searching, conquering there. 



In grassy hollows where the leafy play 
Weaves light and shadow from the golden day, 
Where birds sing sweetly, and the diamond dew 
Is sipped by winds from blooms of every hue; 
There Science lingers through the hastening hours, 
Delving the soils and bending o'er the flowers. 

By streams that bicker in their meteor pass, 
Where scaly glitterings streak the silvery glass, 
There Science ponders; and where ledges rise 
In varying strata decked in varying dyes, 
There the light tapping of her hammer calls 
The tip-toe echoes from the loosening walls ; — 
She parts the seam — she chains her thoughtful sight 
On marks that show Time's unrecorded flight; — 
Where the grand billow, crumbling from its comb 
With low, rich rumble, swings away in foam; 
There Science strays through weed and shell that fringe 
The gleaming strand in many a rainbow tinge; — 
Sweeps o'er the ocean in the tempest's face, 
The surge to measure, and the currents trace ; 
Notes, where the Trades soft winnow o'er the tide 
Bearing the bark in undulating glide. 
And where the black Typhoon bursts red with wrath. 
Tearing the wreck it tramples in its path; — 
Fathoms, where countless periods have spread o'er 
With dead, the deep sea's ever growing floor; — 
Shows how the insect, by instinctive call. 
Branches and dies— himself his flinty wall; — 
Lifting the continents — the dotting isles 
That dimple ocean with a thousand smiles. 

Where up from rocky, sunless depths, are cast 
God's written histories of the ages past; 
Prints, that proclaim where once the monster strode 
Or swept on wings that darkened where they rode; 
Signs, that display when slow progressive earth 
Called the broad bannery coal-fern into birth, 
Whelmed it in gloom, whence, true to Nature's plan, 
Wakening in stone, it gave itself to man ; 



There Science pierces — there her ken perceives 
The world's true records graved on deathless leaves ; 
Builds from a scale — a foot — complete the frame, 
And e'en the era shows to which its life has claim. 

Glance o'er the earth — its human movements scan, 
And thou, oh Science, still art guide to man! 
Thine is the finger, faithful through the dark, 
O'er trackless wastes, to point the trusting bark; 
Thine is the beacon blazing o'er the spray- 
To warn the wanderer of the storm, away; 
Thine is the tube that, like the prophet's eye. 
Pierces to scenes no other can descry; 
Thine is the Engine's calculating brain 
That o'er the Numeral Kingdom wields domain; 
Thine, the witch glass that shows how wondrous rife 
The tiniest globule is with darting life; 
Thine, the light globe that navigates the air 
"With flight earth-dwindling — o'er the thunder's lair; 
Thine, the slight rod whose points the lightnings greet 
And draw their terrors harmless at the feet; 
Thine, the grand pile that shoots the electric stream ; 
Thine, that illumes vast cities with its gleam ; 
Thine, the untiring, space-devouring car; 
Thine, the strange spark that flashes thought afar; 
Thine, the sun's pencil on the crystal pressed; 
And thine the wafting breath o'er ocean's conquered breast. 

Thine the great oak that sees slow ages pass ; 

The little violet dying in the grass ; 

The myriad tribes of air and earth and sea, 

Roamers at will, yet subject all to thee! 

The lofty eagle revelling in his might. 

Seeking the sun in proud, unfaltering flight; 

The lowly humming-bird — the feathery gem — 

Flecking with opals every fragrant stem ; 

The fire-eyed lion filling with his fear 

The sands, as if the fierce Simoon were near ; 

The velvet tiger of soft Ceylon's isle; 

The slippery snake where Plata's blossoms smile; 



9 

The mighty whale whose ponderous gambol shocks 
The deep, till, like a cork, the tall ship rocks, 
The bubble nautilus that spreads its sail 
Of fairy purple, to the favoring gale. 

Long shall full memory hold the scenes where late 
The sons of Science met for high debate! 
How on the mountain-tops of thought they strayed. 
And trophies torn from those dim heights displayed ! 
Then, how, beneath the tent's o'ersweeping cloud, 
They showered their jewels to the raptured crowd! 
And last, how thrilled the throng— one beating heart — 
To the great Orator's resistless art! 
Lighting the reason with his learning's ray. 
Dazzling the fancy with his sunny play. 
Charming — convincing — till his lofty theme 
Became by day the thought — by night the dream. 

Broad in the thoroughfare extends the fane 
Where Science spreads the triumphs of her reign. 
There, in all grades, her various kingdoms show 
Nature, how vast — above — around — below. 

Reared by munificence transcending praise 
Which Dudley's name bears down through endless days, 
The gift of her who still survives to wear 
That name thus honored by her tender care, 
For whom green wreaths will Science ever twine, 
Due to her offering at a blended shrine, 
The graceful temple of the sky has birth 
To scan its realms and draw them down to earth; — 
Proud to all future may the structure stand. 
Knowledge, in radiant streams, diffusing o'er the land! 



CV0 2.-0 (^, 



